March 2004 - Society for California Archaeology

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34 Articles The San Francisco West Approach Project: Unearthing San Francisco’s Accidental 19 th Century Time Capsules Jack Mc Ilroy Anthropological Studies Center Sonoma State University Figure 1: Crew working on a well inside the slide-rail shoring box on Block 10. From May 2001 until January 2003 ASC archaeologists from the Anthropological Studies Center (ASC) at Sonoma State University carried out open area excavation on six city blocks in downtown San Francisco. The project was the result of a long planned research effort that initially targeted fourteen blocks. It was part of the seismic retrofit of the West Approach to the San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge undertaken by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Toll Bridge Program. Detailed historical research and analysis of the development history of each block indicated there was nothing left in the impact areas in the eight blocks that didn’t make the cut, due principally to disturbance from modern construction. Strolling through the city you could have walked past the sites a few blocks from Market Street and the financial district and not known what was going on behind the black plastic covered chain-link fence that keep the dust in. To the world outside, it must have looked like any other downtown construction job. Specific excavation sites were chosen based on the historical research. Commuters were evicted from their parking lots under the elevated section of Interstate Freeway 80 where it cut through the heart of downtown. This did not endear the archaeologists, Caltrans, or Balfour Beatty, the international construction company we worked with, to the hapless drivers. Large areas, and sometimes all, of a city block were fenced off. Security guards were employed to keep the bad guys from looting features as we dug. Archaeologically Sensitive Areas (ASAs) were marked out and the homeless drunks lying paralytic on the asphalt politely escorted off the block. Sticking their heads over the fence the homeless were to be our most frequent spectators, advising the odd passerby (they can be very odd in San Francisco) on the progress of the excavation. We were later to be thankful to them when the field director drove off the site with his laptop sitting on the lowered tailgate of his truck. A group of homeless people recovered it after a following car had run over it. They were camped on the sidewalk discussing the potential impact on the hard drive that had miraculously survived (it was a Dell Inspiron) when the hapless field director stumbled upon them. He had been roaming the streets, looking for his lost computer. Data SCA Newsletter 38(1)
35 Articles rescued and the finders rewarded, he bade farewell to his benefactors thinking unemployed Silicon Valley dotcommers had to wind up somewhere and wasn’t it lucky for him they wound up where they did. A hardy and dedicated crew then set out to uncover the inadvertent time capsules left behind by the earliest and often forgotten inhabitants of this city. These were the pits, privies, and wells in residential, commercial, and institutional back yards on lots occupied in some cases from the 1850s. After water and sewer lines were hooked up, generally no later than the 1880s, they were no longer needed, and they became convenient receptacles for all sorts of unwanted household materials, as well as accidentally dropped objects. Even back then, no-one wanted open pits in their backyards for children or older family members to fall into, so these features would usually be rapidly filled and sealed with a clean layer of sand, turning them into the time capsules they were never intended to be. When combined with census and city directory data, which often enabled the residents on specific lots to be identified across a time spectrum, the excavation opened a window into San Francisco’s past with a view from an angle different to that provided by written documents alone. With each city block from the original fourteen assigned an identifying number, the excavation started on Block 9 (Harrison, Bryant, Second and Third). The site was down near Third Street between the small side streets of Perry and Stillman (formerly Silver Street). Situated on the western slope of Rincon Hill, the highest landform in the downtown area, this ASA was where the undisturbed surface was found closest to modern street elevation, at only about 2 ft. depth. On much of the rest of the project, particularly to the west sloping down toward the 1850s bay marsh, the undisturbed ground surface was up to 8 ft. deep. This was due to sand fill pushed in from nearby dunes and in some cases hauled in from way up Market Street where the modern hill rises en route to the Castro district. Sandwiched between the broader thoroughfares of Harrison and Bryant, the Block 9 ASA was where Kate Wiggins, author of ‘Rebecca of Sunningdale Farm’, opened the Silver Street Kindergarten in 1878. Like almost all of the project area and a large part of old San Francisco, it burned down in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake. The 1906 disaster was marked by debris and burn layers of brick and concrete building rubble, melted, twisted bottles, and black charred wood with the underlying sand burnt red. This 1906 horizon varied from about 3 ft. to 6 ft. depth across the project area. Residents in the apartment block overlooking the site were annoyed by the noise and din of the heavy equipment used to break up the asphalt surface of the Block 9 parking lot at seven in the morning. Negotiations prevailed and Caltrans presented the tenants’ association with a copy of the detailed historical research on the block. The irritated locals eventually got to like both us and their front row view of the project as the ASC crew delved into the depths of Block 9 through the fire and earthquake horizon and unearthed the remains of the Silver Street Kindergarten. Its old wood-lined privies were filled with the slate pencils and tablets used by the children. Other privies and wells were excavated associated with the working class homes crowded in along Silver and Perry streets from the 1850s. Excavation of deep wells was achieved with the use of slide-rail shoring. Once inserted around a well, this created a safe work zone about 14 ft. square. The bucket from a backhoe or a tracked excavator was then lowered into the shored area. The hand-excavated well deposits, which had been stored in five gallon buckets were loaded into the machine bucket, the archaeologists got safely out of the way and the archaeological materials were brought to the surface for processing. Once we had excavated four feet of well deposit, the crew came out of the shored area and the heavy equipment was used to lower the surface around the well by another four feet. An RKI Eagle electronic air monitor was then used to assess contamination levels before the crew entered the deep shoring box trench. This process was repeated until bottom was reached at around 25 ft. depth. At about $2000 a week to rent, the shoring system was expensive but well worth it from the safety angle. The excavation then moved to Block 5 (Howard, Folsom, First and Second) on the northern slope of Rincon Hill targeting the Folsom Street frontage near the intersection with modern Essex Street. This residential block was developed in the late 1850s and then devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire which destroyed everything on it. More of the logistical problems associated with working within the freeway right-of-way in an urban environment became evident. A well was uncovered in a lot that was built on in the 1850s. It had the potential to contain some of the earliest historic period artifacts found in San Francisco. But it was within three feet of a concrete footing supporting a column holding up the Fremont Street exit-ramp from the Bay Bridge. After consultation with Caltrans engineers, it was decided that even with shoring there was the potential for excavation to destabilize the overhead ramp and the well had to be abandoned after being excavated to only 4 ft. depth. On the house lots where we were able to excavate, it was clear, based on the high quality of the ceramics and glassware found, that the former inhabitants were fairly up-market. Block 7 (Harrison, Bryant, First and Second0 was next in line. This was the site of the Saint Mary’s Hospital complex built in 1869 on the east slope of Rincon Hill. Run by the Sisters of Mercy, the four-story buildings of this charitable institution survived the 1906 earthquake but not the fire that followed. The ASAs targeted included the Dead House, the Greenhouse, the Sisters’ Sleeping Rooms, the oven, and part of the Museum. Initial exploration uncovered substantial brick wall foundations beneath demolition debris and fire deposits at depths from 9ft. to 11 ft. Had the foundations been shallower we would have continued. But other foundations and associated privies or wells could have been much deeper. SCA Newsletter 38(1)
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Page 43 and 44: 43 Articles Baker, Joseph, ed. 1914
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March 2004 - Society for California Archaeology

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